Larger display computing environments are becoming popular as the price of monitors continues to decline and the power of personal computers and tablets increase. A large-display area computing environment can be provided by a computing device, such as a desktop, tablet, or notebook computer providing video output to a single large monitor or by combining multiple monitors to create a large-display area. A multi-monitor configuration may comprise monitors of various sizes which when combined provide a large-display area for displaying a computing environment. Simultaneous access to large amounts of information displayed in multiple windows in a large-display area can significantly increase productivity of a user. However, in such large-display systems window management with a conventional input device such as a mouse or touchpad is tedious at best, and at worst extremely difficult to accomplish. For example, to move a window between monitors or across a large-display area, first the mouse cursor must be located, then the title bar of the desired window must be located and dragged to the appropriate monitor with the mouse, this may require large traversals across multiple monitors which may exceed the movement distance allotted for by a typical mouse pad, thereby requiring multiple movements to accomplish the task.
Working in a large-display area computing environment can be complicated by the simple difficulty of locating the mouse cursor on a large-display area, further if the title bar for a desired window is covered by another window, the other window must be moved to expose the title bar and then the desired window moved. This results in a lot of locating, dropping and dragging with a mouse. Also even if all monitors were eventually to be touch-sensitive, using a touch screen interface on multiple monitors for window management could be even more complex because of the physical separation of multiple monitors and the large physical distance needed for gestures to move and manage various windows can exceed the user's comfortable range of motion.
Accordingly, systems and methods that enable improved management of graphic objects, such as windows, across a large-display area remains highly desirable.
It will be noted that throughout the appended drawings, like features are identified by like reference numerals.